A song for Julia Gillard

A friend sent this to me. Very cute.

The special votes are still being counted, and they are not helping Labor. Not only is the coalition still on 73 seats to 72 for Labor, but yesterday they overtook Labor on two party preferred voted. Gillard had suggested that Labor’s TPP lead is why the Independents should support them.

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Comments (13)

tvb

She has less seats, less primary votes now less TPP after an adjustment for seats where the two parties were not contesting against each other. No doubt Julia will disagree with that, no doubt she will count the Green as Labour’s making her even with Tony Abbott. And on and on she will go spinning herself into the history books as the shortest serving PM. My money is on Abbott becoming the next PM though god knows the mission he will have with the 3 amigos especially the one in the 10 gallon hat.

GNZ

Hmm I presume the 3 amigos will all go together, so everything else doesnt matter.
However those guys are all ex-national party i think and from the sorts of seats that would not like labour policy as much (and hate things like mining taxes i suppose). So i presume thats why Tony will probably win unless he screws it up.

Ed Snack

What’s the convention in Australia about who gets the first formal offer to form a government ? Is it the incumbent, the largest party ? If the largest party, how does one handle coalitions, there’s no doubt that Labor is the largest single party, but do formal coalitions count as one party, and what then of the WA Nationals ? Tough calls, but no doubt Gillard has lost a lot of prestige. Holding a government together will be a struggle for either side.

slightlyrighty

tvb

Gillard staked her claim to form a Government on having the most TPP votes. But when that proved to be wrong her claim collapsed and now she looks like a caretaker PM waiting for Tony Abbott to form his Government. She keeps making these mistakes. Rather than staking her claim on the most TPP votes, she should have based her claim on seeking to have a majority of seats in Parliament and she has at least as good a chance at doing that as Tony Abbott. But now her moral claim to form a Government has collapsed and it is all the way with Tony Abbott. And Abbott is not looking too craven whereas Gillard does. Gillard seems to play a short game whereas Abbott looks over the horizon and plays for that. He in my view is the much smarter politician.

Paul1

You are actually incorrect when you assert that the coalition has a lead in seats, they do not. Labor and the coalition both have 72. Your mistake is naming Tony Crook, who was elected in the seat of O’Connor for the National Party of Western Australia, as part of the coalitions seat count. National WA is affiliated with the National Party but they are a different body. Essentially, Nationals WA want to end the coalition. After the last state election in Western Australia they held the balance of power and chose to support the Liberals but are not in coalition with them.

The following from Wikipedia is what Tony Crook has said following the election:

I’m clearly an independent”, he stated to reporters. “I can sit on the crossbenches quite comfortably”.[8] “Tony Abbott urged me to consider my position and said to consider that I am a member of the Nationals. But I highlighted to him that although we are a federated body, the WA Nationals are an autonomous political organisation”. Crook said he had been disappointed by media coverage of the hung parliament, which has included his seat of O’Connor in the number of seats won by the Coalition. “In every news report and press report we see, my number is being allocated in with the Coalition and it shouldn’t be” he said. Crook’s separation from the Coalition puts him at odds with Nationals MPs from the eastern states.[9][10]

Saying that the Coalition have 73 seats is as bad as saying that Labor and the Greens have 73 seats combined.